1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to methods, systems, and apparatus for search engines and searchable content rich databases to incorporate within currently displayed search results, and bring to the users attention, previously accessed search results stored on a user's local system that are relevant to the current search request.
2. Description of Related Art
Both the Internet and intranets are well known means of communication that allow the exchange and retrieval of large amounts of information. This information is exchanged and retrieved on the Internet and intranets by a user accessing a server via a web browser running on the user's local system (e.g., a client computer). The web browser provides a graphical user interface (“GUI”) for retrieving and viewing information, applications and other resources hosted by Internet/intranet servers (hereinafter collectively referred to as “web servers”).
Web servers generally deliver web content to web browsers in the form of web pages using a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (“HTTP”). HTTP is an application protocol that provides a user access to web sites, or the web pages of such web sites, which have various formats including text, graphics, images, sound, and dynamic features. Each web page is formatted using HyperText Markup Language (HTML), which is the standard page description language used with HTTP. HTML allows the web page to be displayed with the text and graphics, and allows for playing sound, animation, and video data. Once a user selects a particular hypertext link, the local system's web browser reads and interprets the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) address associated with such link. The browser then connects with the Web server at the selected URL, and requests the HTTP of the selected link. In return, the web server sends the requested link to the web browser running on the local system in HTML format for interpretation by the browser, and ultimately, viewing of the web page or site by the user.
In the process of retrieving the displayed hypertext links, a web server may be instructed to focus its search and display of results. This is accomplished by a user entering a search query into a search window of a search engine or searchable database (hereinafter collectively referred to as “search engines”) running on the web server. The search query may include keywords and/or phrases. The search engine navigates the Internet or intranet to locate web pages containing the desired keywords and/or phrases. The search engine then returns a list of web pages containing such keywords and/or phrases for viewing by the user, whereby the web pages are ranked based on an algorithm used by the search engine.
However, a problem with conventional search engines is that the searches are limited to locating web page or web site files only on the Internet, or intranet, and displaying such web pages or sites to the user. To add to this problem, once the user is provided with these search results, if the user desires to search for the same topic or a similar topic at a later time, the search engine may display a new set of results that may, or may not, include those web pages or sites that were located in the previous search results. This is undesirable since the user may desire to access or re-access selected ones of the web pages or sites listed in the previous search results.
The above problems become even further complicated when the user searches for a previously searched for topic using different keywords or phrases than those used in the past. In such an event, the search engine typically returns search results that include numerous new web sites and pages, whereby the user must then perform the tedious and time-consuming task of browsing through the newly listed web sites and pages to locate a desired previously accessed web page or site of interest. Additionally, any saved navigation histories on how a user reached a particular web site or page are generally lost when the user is presented with a new list of search results.
Accordingly, it would be beneficial to provide methods, systems and apparatus for allowing a user to easily and quickly gain access to a detailed search result list that includes files (i.e., web pages and web sites) previously accessed by the user during a past session for enabling the user to locate a web site or web page of interest.